We parsed the following live from the Web into this page. Such content is managed by its original site and not cached on Discover Life. Please send feedback and corrections directly to the source. See original regarding copyrights and terms of use.

These extremely elongate fishes have a depressed body; a very long tubular snout with a short oblique mouth at the end; minute teeth; no fin spines; a single dorsal fin posteriorly on the body directly over the anal fin; and a forked tail fin with a long central filament. They feed by sucking in small invertebrates and fishes.

Four species in one genus are known from all tropical seas, two occur in our area, one circumtropical species and one endemic.

Jordan , D.S. and Bollman, C.H., 1890., Descriptions of new species of fishes collected at the Galapagos Islands and along the coast of the United States of Colombia, 1887-88, by the U.S. Fish Commission steamer 'Albatross'., Proc. U.S. Nat. Mus., 12:149-183.

Love, M.S., Mecklenburg, C.W., Mecklenburg, T.A., Thorsteinson, L.K., 2005., es of the West Coast and Alaska: a checklist of North Pacific and Artic Ocena species from Baja California to the Alaska-Yukon border., U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey, Biological Resources Division, 288pp.